Five of Coins
by Baymoth
Summary: Three months after Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi's eye starts bleeding and Rin is forced into a role of shaping the future of Konoha's Team Seven. AU
1. Chapter 1

**Title** : Five of Coins  
 **Summary** : Three months after Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi's eye starts bleeding and Rin is forced into a role of shaping the future of Konoha's Team Seven.  
 **Pairing** : None (for now)  
 **Rating** : T  
 **Notes** : Written due to the relative dearth of Rin-centric fics and especially ones where she grows up to be the badass jounin sensei of Team Seven.  
 **Warnings** : Blood, gore, speculations on bloodline abilities

* * *

Nothing changed when Obito died.

Perhaps it had been naïve of her to expect something. Individuals often went through profound changes at the passing of their loved ones. She thought maybe she would feel different once her friend's name was set in stone.

But she didn't feel different. Rin cried at the funeral because she was expected to. Wore black because everyone else did. She didn't feel wiser for the lesson in loss. The sky didn't fall down. The sun stayed up. She wondered if her numbness made her a terrible person and sensei reminded her that everyone processed grief differently.

The simple matter was that life resumed. Missions did not stop. Kakashi's rejection was hurtful but expected.

Obito's burial meant nothing.

She observed with a dispassionate eye as Kakashi's katon set a small hut ablaze. The enemy ninja were still trapped inside. Doors, windows and other exits had been rigged with exploding tags to make sure none escaped alive.

It was overkill. Like weeding the flowerbed with a doton. A second later, a sudden burst of flames sucked the oxygen from the air, imprinting against her skin like a film of heat. Rin blinked several times to bleed the light from her dazzled eyes. And as the land burned around them, Kakashi opened a map and struck a line across another until she couldn't tell where one country began and the other ended.

Idly, she traced the symbol for Konoha. She worried about her teammate. The way he stood and sat and ate and slept like a sleepwalker on the edge of wakefulness. She worried about the way he shivered, racked by jolts of lightning chakra diffused in his coils.

In a way, it was strange hearing his voice after days of visual cues. There was very little to talk of between them. She and Kakashi had almost nothing in common. The effort she made on the first day, trying to fill the air with inane chatter, had long faded to silence.

One more, he promised, picking through the smoldering ashes. He stacked four grinning skulls together and crushed them under his heel. Rin flinched when he stirred the dust with his feet, holding up an equal number of forehead protectors fused to bone.

Alright, she said, accepting the gift. She didn't believe him.

At her response, Kakashi turned west where the moon lit the clawing arc of his hair into a pale blaze. It was starting to get long on him. Curling past his ears to soften his lack of expression. It almost made him look nice. Personable even. It made him human.

She didn't voice the thought out loud and kept her council as she followed.

A lucky Iwa chunin had escaped his funerary pyre. The reasonable thing to do would have been to allow other patrol teams to arrest him. They were exhausted. She was exhausted. Why else would they broadcast their presence with explosions and loud conflagrations?

"He can't be too far." Kakashi repeated. "Just one more."

There would always be one more. All the Iwa blood in the world could not soothe Kakashi's wounded heart. Fortunately, the Iwa ninja had not manage to get far. He was injured from the explosion, having been caught literally with his pants down. The side of his face was the consistency of red bean paste on melted slush and she felt a twinge of pity for the boy, barely in his teens, as she drew back and took refuge in the too-tall mushrooms.

One more thing that had not changed since Obito's death. Kakashi would not allow her in battle.

Rin knew that during the time of the warring states, men and women fought equally. A distilled tea was just as deadly as a secret ninja technique. But Shinobi were bred as much as they were trained. When the ninja population crashed, a unanimous decision was made to protect the women from the frontlines.

After the establishment of the five shinobi nations, the anachronistic tradition remained seeped in the ninja creed. It bled into academy training and everyday life. Despite the robust number of civilians and her genetic worthlessness, she—as a girl—was discouraged from pursuing the art. When she was taught techniques of kunoichi such as Setsuna of Black Sand or Makoto the Blade, she didn't know how the clan heads ever made the women stop fighting.

Obito had been her friend. Until he died, she hadn't known what it felt to be the weakest link. If Obito was alive, she could have deluded herself into thinking that Kakashi cared for her. He could have even loved her. But she knew that her desperate dream could never bear fruit. Obito ruined everything when he asked Kakashi to protect her. _Her_ , the one who graduated ahead of an _Uchiha_ when he was busy choking on a piece of candy.

White chakra shrieked with the cry of a thousand birds as it shot past her. The Iwa chunin ceased his whimpers at the sound, at the sudden flash of Kakashi's hair, fearful of the famed Yellow Flash or the White Fang newly resurrected.

But it was neither who lanced lightning in his gut, a sharingan whirling like the mad eyes of a goshawk. The boy dropped to the ground. Blood splattered on the grass. Miraculously, the boy survived and was crying as his wound sucked at Kakashi's hand. Kakashi had deliberately missed the vital parts.

He wanted the Iwa teen to _live_.

Rin squashed a green mayfly against her elbow and cleared her throat.

"Kakashi."

When her teammate failed to answer, she shoved him aside, scanning the bleeding chunin for any information that could excuse Kakashi's actions. The teenager looked vaguely familiar. His clan symbol was stitched on the back of his collar, hidden from view. Her stomach curdled when she saw that he was a Kamizuru, a powerful Iwa clan. A second, smaller character below it stylizing his given name. After sketching the images on the back of an exploding tag, she slit the boy's throat.

The irony was that she did not care for Iwa-nin. Rin was a field medic, not a doctor or a nurse. She had taken no oaths to guard the sanctity of life, none that she hadn't broken when she left Obito in his shallow grave—she didn't know the boy at all. But she teared up when blood boiled past his lips and streaked his chin. She was furious—enough to _chew_ exploding clay—because this boy made her feel when Obito couldn't.

"Rin."

Kakashi held out his hand, obviously discomfited by her silence. She sniffled and looked up. He hadn't fixed his forehead protector yet. Both eyes were visible. His left eye was bleeding.

No, not his left eye— _Obito's_ eye.

Rin leapt to her feet, towering over Kakashi's tender twelve years. It had made her horribly awkward at first. Next to her genius teammate, she might as well have been a giantess from the far reaches from the Dark Continent. But she pressed her height to her advantage and inspected his injured eye. She knew that he would never voice his pain out loud. Help might come from the Uchiha compound, sitting through judgement and vitriol that Obito's sharingan deserved to be placed with someone worthier of the clan ability.

Rin's parents were civilians. Their parents were civilians. Rin lacked the decorated pedigree of shinobi who were promoted past chunin. She had no special techniques to pass down. No bloodline ability to beget a new clan. She was at best, a competent medic. A decent fighter in a pinch. To her, an eye was an eye.

For Kakashi, the circumstances were different. He was the scion of the Hatake clan. She did not understand clan politics but she knew this. Kakashi could not ask the Uchiha for aid.

"Uchiha need doctors too." Kakashi had rasped on the first night, gathered around a small stick fire and heating gruel over the smoke. She remembered draping at least three cloaks on him because he'd shivered, as though he couldn't get warm enough, folded around a bowl of watery rice like a starving dog.

It was Minato-sensei who had insisted they sit down and share a meal, fill their stomachs with something hot even if it meant they threw it up later. The only thing she had been able to do was keep the eye clean and pus-free. She consoled herself with the knowledge that despite the circumstances, the transplant had been a success. The scar beneath her thumb unfortunate but Kakashi was very, _very_ lucky.

"There's got to be someone at the hospital who knows how to treat this."

Organ transfers were common during war. Between close relatives, it was easy. The village hospital kept meticulous records of compatible donors and patients. But she did not know anything about the transference of bloodline abilities between two non-relatives. By her estimate, she violated at least a dozen medical protocols when she'd replaced Kakashi's blinded eye. Such a thing was impossible, unheard of.

And slowly, it had dawned on her.

Minato-sensei, like Kakashi, was stalling. They both knew the risk of revealing Obito's sharingan to his clan. Her cheeks flamed when she realized how little she knew of the village she was determined to protect. It had been her fault. Her fault for being captured, her fault Obito died. If she hadn't been captured, Obito would have been alive.

When Kakashi spun his fanatical gaze upon her, she'd felt fear and resentment. She had dreamed of such moment many times, ever since she was assigned to Kakashi's team, turned it over and over in her head until the idea had transmuted itself into fantasy she could construct with her eyes closed.

Kakashi was looking at _her_. He saw _her_ and he needed _her_ help. And she had hated him for it. Why? Why look at her when he'd already confessed he did not and could not care for her?

Because they were a team.

It didn't matter Obito was dead. Kakashi wasn't dead. Minato-sensei wasn't dead and she wasn't dead.

As soon as they returned to the village, she went to the hospital. Nobody had been surprised to see her. News traveled faster than flu in winter. Doctors on duty expressed their concern but she'd waved them off. She broke into the records room, rifling through file after file when a nurse caught her, face bruised with anger, her eyes deep from lost sleep.

"My teammate died." She'd burst out. "He was an Uchiha."

It had explained nothing but the nurse's face slackened into one of understanding. Her stomach twisted into knots. Rin hated lying. She hated she had to lie to people who had worked hard, was loyal to the village and _cared_. All for an eye Kakashi should never use. The eye hadn't protected Obito and he was an _Uchiha_.

And as soon as they came, she was ashamed of her thoughts. It hadn't been pity in the woman's eyes, it was compassion. They had all lost someone in the war. Every day, bodies were wheeled in, tagged and sent to the incinerator. Before closing the door behind her, the nurse simply knocked the correct files down with a sly grin, just because she thought it would make Rin's day a bit better.

She'd burst into messy tears. All the sorrow she had bottled up since Team Seven left its soul in the dirt of the Grass Country. Obito was more than a soldier of the Leaf. He had been her friend and she missed him very much.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much in the way of information. The Uchiha rarely deigned to visit the village hospital. Never for their sharingan. The shoudaime and the nidaime had wrote exclusively on tactics. They said Uchiha bodies had to be burned.

Thankfully, Kakashi's eye never showed any signs of infection. She assumed that he retained perception in his left eye though the chakra drain made it nearly worthless. Kakashi kept it covered up as a result. First behind the thick bandages and currently, his forehead protector. Everyone knew that the prodigy Kakashi received a debilitating injury when he fought against the Iwa. What they couldn't understand was why he refused donations of perfectly good eyes.

So Rin smiled and lied through her teeth. She told the well-wishers that Kakashi would come around. Someday, he might even be ready. She might be ready. No one needed to know.

Nothing changed. Kakashi killed and she healed.

"You're bleeding."

Kakashi grunted, shaking off her concern. He wiped his hand with a handful of grass, kicking the Iwa chunin for posterity. She winced.

"Kakashi." She placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and he reacted explosively. Only when he saw that it was her, just her, plain, old Rin, did his alarmed expression collapse into one of brittle recognition.

His legs gathered beneath him.

"Rin," He acknowledged in a voice on the precipice. "I'm fine."

She was beginning to hate that word. Fine, as though anything was fine. Only the metal-mongers were fine, rich in blood money. They were not fine, they were ninja—they would never _be_ fine. But Kakashi would be fine, at least in body, if she could just get a good look at his eye.

"No you're not." She disagreed. Without Obito as a buffer, she had learned to assert herself. "Look."

Rin drew a surgical scalpel from her pouch, clean and shiny enough to eat from. She tilted it to offer him a glimpse of his reflection.

Kakashi's eye was bleeding, a thin gush of blood trickling down his scar soaking into the fabric. There was also something else. Rin had not had privilege of seeing a regular sharingan up close. The Uchiha were notoriously secretive of their bloodline abilities, they would have never found her enough of a threat to activate it in her presence. But Obito's eyes, warm and pulsating in the cup of her hand, she remembered clearly. Black on red, two perfectly formed commas seared deep in the red irises. The eyes she still felt when blood stained her hands. And Obito's empty eye socket when she brushed it closed.

Kakashi had told her, it was why he could never acknowledge her feelings. It wasn't fair. The war, it took too much. It just wasn't fair.

But her teammate was hurt. He was bleeding and that was something she could help with. There was more at stake than her unrequited crush. She could tell, even without touching, he was expending massive amount of chakra just to keep his borrowed eye open.

She attempted to shield it with her hand. As far as she knew, sharingan did not offer night vision and her sticky palms were better than nothing if only to keep Obito from staring out his lost eye. But Kakashi spurned her touch and pushed her away. His grip on the handle of the scalpel iron-clad as three commas in his sharingan warped and spiraled into a pinwheel black on red.

The black points blurred into branches and then there was a shape, one she had never seen before, solidifying just briefly and she _thought_ she saw the air ripple into the whirlpool of a jounin flak jacket. Chakra gathered, monstrous and impossible, as though her teammate was attempting chidori with his _eye_ , when Kakashi's legs went from underneath him, pouring him in a boneless heap on top of the dead Iwa chunin.

Rin let out a small squeak as she slid down to her knees, pressing her fingers against his pulse point to make sure that he still breathed. To her relief, Kakashi's heartbeat was steady. It was Kakashi after all. _Ba_ -Kashi as Obito would have called him.

She did not have time to waste. Rin dug her fingers into the blood puddle and smeared her thumb on a summoning scroll. A cheeky blue toadling appeared, in a cloud of smoke-edged chakra. Though nominally neutral, the toads were fond of sensei and his sensei and were a massive help to the war effort in Konoha.

Waving a tiny, webbed feet, the little toad took a moment to reorient itself.

"Tamonten forest, three kilometers west." She barked. "Find help, please. Tell them it's Kakashi."

Hours must have crawled by. She thought surely the sun had gone down and come up again in the time the toadling had gone. As Rin made the decision to attempt another summon, Kushina arrived in a storm of leaves, enough medical supplies for an open heart surgery clutched in her two fists.

After Obito's death, Minato-sensei shared the secrets of the Hiraishin with those closest to him. It was supposed to have been a surprise. At any rate, only sensei had enough chakra stores and control to attempt it more than once on the field. But she couldn't help but resent her teacher a little at the thought that if he had told them, if he had been there, things would have been different. Obito wouldn't have died.

She gave Kushina a quick hug and noticed that the older woman was pale, panicked grey eyes draining every last drop of color from her normally vibrant face. Instead of reacting with her usual anger, Kushina despaired when she saw Kakashi.

Between the two of them, they had enough chakra to jump-start Kakashi's recovery. While her teammate was wheeled off into a private room, she went to Minato-sensei and told her teacher everything.

Minato-sensei was grim. It was no small affair asking favor from the Uchiha clan. Especially when person asking was the candidate for the seat of a kage. Before, it wouldn't have mattered. Association with Obito allowed them insight into the clan no other villager was allowed. But even the meager handful of tolerance faded when Obito turned eleven, twelve, thirteen, without his eyes ever taking the blood-red shade. It pained her the Uchiha would never know Obito's worth beyond his cursed eyes.

Kushina put her fist through the wall.

"I'll ask Mikoto, even if it means dragging her out of the compound myself." She declared.

"She'll tell." Minato-sensei said promptly.

"Damn clan politics!"

"Kushina..."

"But we'll know first." Rin spoke up, fidgeting when all eyes rested on her. "Right?"

Minato-sensei did not like it. None of them liked it. But Kakashi had already signed himself out of the hospital against medical advice. He was holed up in his house and he had stank of blood, even to her whose abilities only came from experience.

Uchiha Mikoto was sent for but did not come immediately. She waited until sunset, her form illuminated by the brilliant orange and magenta of the sky when she knocked on the door.

Obito's second cousin once removed was beautiful with long black hair, heart-shaped face and night-black eyes all Uchiha possessed. There was a sense of melancholy about her that refused to slough off as she set her basket down, peeling off her slippers one by one before folding into Kushina-nee's embrace. Sensing something amiss, Rin scooted between the Uchiha woman and Kakashi who was lying down with an ice pack balanced on his forehead. Though her eyes tracked the subtle shift, Uchiha Mikoto did not comment as she listened to Minato-sensei's explanation.

If she was surprised by Obito's sharingan, she did not show it. She raked Kakashi's still form with a brief glance and nodded.

"May I?" she asked politely, hovering before her teammate's face.

Kakashi swallowed but nodded once in agreement.

Uchiha Mikoto gathered chakra into her hands and Rin could not figure out why the movements seemed so familiar until she burst out, "You're a medic!"

"Yes," Uchiha Mikoto answered without missing a beat. "I took up the art when I realized I would not be allowed to remain with my jounin team because of my marriage. This way, I could continue to fight."

Kakashi's eye opened. Everyone else startled at the oppressive wave of chakra, like a rabid thing slobbering its warning from behind a rusted fence. Rin could feel the sharingan roll, drinking what little energy left in her teammate to a single point in his pupil that radiated into a three-armed shuriken.

Uchiha Mikoto sighed and leaned back, a slump to her shoulders like a teacher disappointed by a talented but a lazy pupil.

"I was afraid of this." She said finally, folding her hands across her lap. "Jounin Hatake." She asked, "When did you start experiencing pain in your left eye?"

The possessive did nothing to lessen the tension. Kakashi's hand twitched, fighting the urge to slide his forehead protector down his face.

"Yesterday morning," he grunted in admission and she seethed at the realization she had not noticed, at all. "But it's always like that. My body, it's not used to it."

"No, I suppose not."

"You can't take my eye." Kakashi said flatly.

"Kakashi," Minato-sensei chided. "Please excuse him Uchiha-san. Obito's death, he took it badly."

"Very well." Uchiha Mikoto commented without any inflection. After a moment of consideration, she said, "What I'm about to say next must not leave this room."

Night was falling. Crows cawed the last of their goodbyes before parting from the rafters, crickets, mice and owls swiftly taking the post they abandoned. Rin desperately wanted to close her ears. She did not want to hear it. Knowledge was the cudgel that determined their safety or death. She did not want to know what she could have done to save her friend.

"The Uchiha," Uchiha Mikoto continued, "have always prided themselves on their dojutsu. In recent years, it has become a mark of status within the clan. But it has not always been this way. It is said, the first Uchiha achieved the sharingan when his mother died during childbirth. The sharingan is considered a sign of mourning."

Kakashi flinched.

"There is a variant of the sharingan called the mangekyo. It is power which can only be achieved at a great price. If it had been a technique, it would be a kinjutsu—a forbidden technique. But the mangekyo cannot be learned, it is given. When the bond between us and our loved ones is severed forcibly through death."

Her hands flew up to her mouth.

"That's horrible!"

Uchiha Mikoto pinned her with disapproval, lips thinned and almost bloodless.

"The mangekyo signals the beginning of an end. In exchange for power, the neural nerves are flooded with chakra. It is as though," She paused, "I have heard it explained as filling a glass with a river. It cannot be done. It erodes the paths and leads to an eventual death."

Kushina-nee voiced her denial.

 _Kakashi_ —her _Kakashi_ , would die? But Kakashi sat up, chin held proudly at his death sentence.

Uchiha Mikoto shook her head.

"This is why we discourage our children from befriending those from outside the clan. Our children first give their loyalties to their parents, to their family and finally friends. If they form a deep connection with an outsider, the clan cannot guarantee their safety. War never ends. Only few children are born to our clan per generation, each precious. Even fewer survive. In our hearts, the sharingan is no more our greatest weapon than our darkest shame.

"When the village asked for its sacrifice, the clan elders decreed Obito be our offering. They believed him a burden. His parentage," she frowned, "Was not ideal."

Kakashi tried to interrupt, "What do you mean not _ideal_..."

A pair of sharingan cut through his attempt. Color warred in the Uchiha woman's eyes, at times appearing to be wine red and in others, pitch black.

"Obito was an orphan. He was free to give his loyalties to you."

Kakashi looked like he wanted to throw up.

"But he had a cousin. They were like brothers once. This afternoon, Uchiha Shisui completed his mangekyo sharingan."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Five of Coins  
 **Summary:** Three months after Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi's eye starts bleeding and Rin is forced into a role of shaping the future of Konoha's Team Seven. AU  
 **Rating:** T  
 **Pairing:** None  
 **A.N.:** This was hard. Mostly because I needed to pace myself when I all I wanted to do was skip fifteen years ahead when Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are all precious babies and don't know anything at all. But thank you everyone for the reviews, follows and faves. Hope it was worth the wait ;)  
 **Warnings:** none applicable for this chapter?

* * *

"No," Rin interrupted. "I don't understand."

She repeated herself in case she hadn't been heard. No one stepped forward to correct her ignorance—no one seemed to want to. She felt that there was a vital piece of information she was missing from the dialogue. A salient detail she was not privy to because she was a girl with no prospects, no great name and no bones tied to the root of the village.

Her parents were civilians. Their parents and their parents were civilians, farmers and merchants from the land of the slow-flowing rivers. She didn't know who Uchiha Shisui was but she had seen, her entire team and several classmates had seen, the _adults_ had seen but never remarked upon, Obito bullied by his clansmen, ridiculed as the butt of every blue-blooded joke.

An arm of camaraderie often turned to trap when Uchiha boys, similar in age but unfamiliar, clan apprentices, chunin, genjutsu masters, dripped word after poisonous word into the curve of Obito's flushed ears. The Uchiha didn't give a shit about Obito. It was laughable how they recanted their indifference and laid claim to him when he wasn't. even. there.

"You're lying." Kakashi shook his head once, twice, like a stag trying to throw a hound from his proud shoulders. "No, Obito was your clansmen. This means you would have known. You _knew_ he was alive."

 _Oh,_ Rin thought startled. But they left Obito behind.

Obito didn't die where they buried him in the land of grass far away from home. A passerby, maybe an Iwa scout sent to retrieve the bodies, tipped off by the scrabbling in the earth, raised her Uchiha teammate from his grave and killed him. He died alone. His death had been for nothing; his sacrifice meant nothing. Rin could have saved him and the truth became the thing that crawled out the drain at night, sour, misshapen and gross.

She was about to throw up.

Laughter strangled her throat.

"Obito is alive?"

One by one, her team looked away in shame. Shame was not what she was looking for. It wasn't what she needed. She wanted answers, answers from people she loved and trusted but thought so little of her as to shield her from reality.

Rin was no clan heiress to be coddled and guided into greatness. She was Team Minato. Her first kill was using a taijutsu technique she learned at the academy. She decided to bite the proverbial exploding tag and turned to the one person who knew.

"Is Obito alive?"

Uchiha Mikoto raised an eyebrow at her directness though she hadn't for Kakashi's outbursts. The Uchiha were one of the four noble houses of Konoha, a great honor, an unforgivable one. Rin was only a soldier, a chunin, and a field medic. When Uchiha Mikoto parted her mouth, Rin shrieked, "IS HE ALIVE?!"

She could have heard a cricket blink in the silence that followed.

"He is dead." The woman said baldly, face smooth as stone. "Uchiha Obito is dead."

At first, she thought the wretched scream was _hers_. Bile scoured her mouth. She was the one who made the decision Obito could not be saved. It was her fault, all of it. And he had been alive. She should have been the one to kill him.

But it was Kakashi who let loose a lion's roar and flooded the room with killing intent. Kakashi, whose promise to protect her came from the lips of a dying boy who was stupid enough to love her, to trust her, to care for her and to die for her. The surge of chakra shocked her into stillness. Too quick for anyone to react, he was already twelve steps ahead, lightning shackled to his bony wrists.

"Kakashi!"

Uchiha Mikoto was a mother, a housewife and a clan head. She was not bound by the same creed they were; she did not hesitate when sidestepping Kakashi's attack, her arms opening in a dancer's sweep to scatter stars from her floral sleeves.

The blades fell apart in midair, spreading into a mesh of spider silk over Kakashi's sharingan-mad eye. Uchiha Mikoto was born Uchiha. She knew secrets her teammate was only beginning to discover.

But she was not Kakashi.

There was a game she played when she was young. Back when she was at the Academy.

Supplies were limited in war and Konoha knew her wars well. She had survived two and hoarded her resources like an aging fishwife would her coins, knowing that the fragile treaty with Suna could shatter at any second, knowing Iwa despised her children, Kiri envied them and Kumo thought her ripe for taking.

Metal was precious. Once a week, a cart passed by her house, asking for donations in scrap metal and pans. Anything that could be melted down to forge a blade.

Instead of kunai, she grew up dodging broad-veined leaves. The goal was to mark every leaf as hers. Most of her classmates preferred the katon because of its wide range. But the katon was destructive and often created a sudden updraft, letting leaves pass harmlessly through licks of flames.

Rin personally preferred the suiton. She wasn't the best at nature transformations but she understood the goal was to mark her targets. The day she was introduced to her new teammates, Minato-sensei asked them to play leaf-tag and punched a tree. As predicted, Obito spat fire. The fire fizzled to smoke when water swept over them and she had grinned because nobody in her year could beat her.

Kakashi was different; he'd never been anything less than a ruthless tactician.

He cut through the strings like it was nothing. The skin on his fingers paled and sloughed into diamond scales. Rin could hear birds singing, thousands of them, all inside the small apartment Kakashi called his home.

Years later, when looking back, she would hear a warbler in the trees and remember this. Every time a sparrow sang or a rooster crowed to his heart's content, she'd set off an exploding seal to make them stop.

Kakashi kept going.

The dog seal's open palm sharpened into a spear thrust and Uchiha Mikoto threw herself backwards, chidori slicing through the black veil of her hair. She shaped her hands from rat to boar, biting back ember between her teeth. And at that range, Rin knew she would not miss.

The earth trembled.

Walls shook, floor vibrating as the furniture beat a fraught staccato against the grain. For a moment, she thought it was an earthquake and braced herself against whatever doton the Uchiha activated beneath her heel.

But it was not Uchiha Mikoto whose sharingan twisted into a three-sided shuriken. Rin gasped when she saw it. She recognized it. The death spiral tugged at the edges of the Uchiha's being—it was over.

Minato-sensei struck them apart and grabbed Kakashi from behind.

"Rin! Now!"

Instinctively, she leapt to her teacher's aid. She tore up the floorboards skidding to a stop. Too much chakra in her feet—a rookie mistake. Something her jounin teammate would have pointed out if he'd been in his right mind.

Sensei hissed and she yelped as Kakashi ran lightning through his coils. His sclera burned white and lit up his thick skull from inside out like a morbid jack-o-lantern.

Rin uncapped a syringe with her teeth and jammed it in the muscle. If Kakashi would not stay still, she would make him. Just to remind him he was not alone. He did not have to do everything alone. The Uchiha had hid Obito from them and whether he liked it or not, she had just as much right to hate them too.

"Let, me, _go_."

"I will not." Their teacher promised him.

Kakashi choked back a sob, sucking oxygen like a hooked trout. He fell to the floor as his limbs turned to jelly and she struck him in the shoulder, again, again, and again.

"Stupid!" She yelled, driving the needle in the floor with her fist. "You are so stupid!"

She liked to think that he agreed. There was something in his eyes that hadn't been there before. Shot through the cornea like a wormy parasite.

It was like he finally tasted impossibility and found it bitter. Minato-sensei told her, everyone grieved differently. Hot droplets seared her collarbone and she understood them to be tears.

Obito was dead.

An arm dropped around her shoulder and she leaned, drawn to the warmth and the smell of sunshine even though it was dusk. Her teacher hummed, almost absentmindedly, his expression incredibly kind as he combed through the feathers of Kakashi's silvery-grey hair, wiping the boy's face clean with his bare palms.

She cried.

She didn't stop for a long time.

+++++2+++++

She answered her teacher with a wobbly, watery expression. Not very reassuring at all. Her cheeks heating up as she wiped her face, suddenly conscious of what she was doing, how she must look to everyone else.

Sniffling, Rin sat with her head lowered, waiting for her nose to drip-dry wondering why she couldn't muster the strength to grab the roll of toilet paper just a koi-length away behind her; ashamed and feeling like she could die from the embarrassment of her outburst.

Oblivious to her dilemma, Minato-sensei addressed the woman in front of them anchored with emerald chains, released only when Kushina came back with a half-hearted scowl and an armful of refreshments. She was surprised that Kakashi kept anything in his fridge at all. Rin had been starting to believe that the boy existed purely on stupidity and soldier pills.

She squeaked when Kushina dropped beside her, squishing her between Minato-sensei. But she did not move to get out of the way. It was fine—it made her feel _safe_.

"Uchiha-san," Her teacher asked, cradling Kakashi's head in his lap. "Please explain why you tried to kill my student."

Rin sartled.

Uchiha Mikoto seemed surprised he had said anything at all.

"Observe." The Uchiha said as she slid a kunai forward.

It was standard issue, sharp, metal. Rin had seen a thousand like it before, melted, bent, and broken. But she had never seen it stretched like a coil, pulled until it met end to end, the iron blanched with the strain of its new shape.

Minato-sensei looked around at the walls, at the floor, the disarray of furniture and far-flung books. He took a cassette on the floor and shook it until a tangle of tape fell through the bottom spinning bronze contrails in the air.

"What was that technique?"

"I don't know."

And Rin immediately thought— _liar_ , black and pitched with hatred, because she saw the Uchiha's eyes go round and red like a leopard with scattered spots; a leopard that had seen movement below and slithered into the leaves wondering, how could she have it? How could she take it?

"The very nature of the mangekyo sharingan[1] makes it rare. We do not speak of it openly."

Minato-sensei's expression was cold and Rin flinched, remembering that her teacher was the Yellow Flash of Konoha. Bingo books warned enemy ninja to run in the other direction. At that moment, she would not have traded places with Uchiha Mikoto for anything in the world.

"You told us Uchiha Shisui _completed_ his mangekyo."

"Shisui is not Obito." The woman corrected sharply. "His abilities were never in doubt; his parentage cannot be denied."

Blue eyes narrowed.

"Obito's parents were unacceptable."

"Means one of 'em wasn't Uchiha." Kushina stated, her voice incredibly flat.

"A poor choice of words." Uchiha Mikoto demurred but she did not deny it. It fit in with why Obito was treated so poorly by his clansmen. Clans took bloodline very seriously. For the Uchiha, marrying outside the family, whatever Obito's circumstances were, must have been tantamount to betrayal.

"Is that why he was ostracized?" Minato-sensei asked, echoing her thoughts.

"That is the simplest explanation." The Uchiha woman agreed and she leaned forward, intent on taking the kunai back.

"What is the long one?"

Killing intent poured off her teacher in waves and Uchiha Mikoto eyed the twisted kunai, silently balancing the risks and rewards of claiming the proof of Kakashi's mangekyo sharingan. She relented with a sigh, a leopard with only feathers and air between her claws.

"The shinobi of Obito's line were great warriors. Misled in their love and friendship perhaps, but they were once the pride of this village. It is a shame," she continued, "that they met their ends in the Second Shinobi War. His mother, may she rest in peace, did not live long after his birth."

The Uchiha's words made her hair rise on end and she didn't know _why_. The way she spoke of Obito's parents was beyond disrespectful. It was _vile_.

"Then it's true?" Kushina interrupted. She had dug crescents all the way up to her knees. Against her fair skin, they became bruises that mapped her bone like tattoos. "All of it? Obito..."

"Yes."

"But you spoke of bonds." Minato-sensei said harshly. "Between Obito and Uchiha Shisui. And," He looked down, at Kakashi who was curled in his lap. "Obito and Kakashi."

Annoyance flickered past the Uchiha's face. Like a veil-tailed fish in a murky water. So fast that she thought she'd imagined it.

"The basic theory of chakra, Namikaze-san, is that it can be traced back to a single source. The shinju, the sacred tree from which all creatures with chakra descend, connects us to each other. A mother to her child, a man to his lover, a friend to another, Jounin Hatake to my cousin."

"You know how he died."

And so it ran full circle into the thing that had brought them together.

Kakashi always reminded them that their lives did not allow for mistakes. He used to look down on Obito because he was soft and cheerful and naïve, hardly a ninja material. If it were not for his enthusiasm and name, she doubted that he would have made chunin.

In reality, Obito had been a competent ninja. Given time, he could have been good. Grown into his eyes and flailing limbs. But war was no place to raise children, her parents said. Obito, in many ways, had been a child. They all were. Children were expected to make mistakes. Except this time, her mistake cost Obito his life. And it felt terrible, having said it out loud. It had nothing to do with grief, anger or fear. It was just gnawing awfulness she would take to her grave.

She shook when Uchiha Mikoto said acid-tongued,

"We received no notes. No ransom. Nothing to begin the search."

"You could have _tried_."

"How?" The Uchiha asked, spreading her hands. "We are at war. Any attempt at retrieving the body would be _treason_."

Because the Uchiha were one of Konoha's noble clans, greatly honored and feared. They would never be allowed to set foot outside during wartime for the fear of other villages stealing their eyes. "The mangekyo proves the legitimacy of jounin Hatake's claim. It would not have turned otherwise. But it will not stop the clan elders from demanding its return."

"What do you suggest we do?" Minato-sensei asked stiffly.

"Make him give it up. _Burn it_."

Like how they burned incense before the ancestor tablet on New Year. To wish for good fortune and banish evil spirits. But Obito wasn't an evil spirit. Why would he bother reach out from the pure land to haunt an eye? If Rin had been the one left behind, she would have been so mad she wouldn't have bothered to look at them.

"And if he doesn't?"

"There will be warnings." Uchiha Mikoto suggested. "Nothing untoward. Little things like a misplaced cup or a missing scroll. A broken hinge, a cracked window. Enough to make others wary perhaps, enough that he would be alone. It wouldn't take much. It never does. We are shinobi. There are no shortages of blade for hire."

"Are you _threatening_ my student?" Minato-sensei demanded, outraged.

"We cannot risk the mangekyo falling into enemy hands." The woman said matter-of-fact. "You know why it must be this way. My clan cannot afford another avenger."

"And what about Uchiha Shisui?"

"He understands."

"That you sacrificed his only family for this?"

Rin gasped.

But it was not her teacher the Uchiha reproached for his rudeness. She turned to Kushina in disappointment, brows furrowed like she'd seen a dirty puppy piddle on her thousand-thread Suna rug.

"You are an Uzumaki." The woman disapproved. "He should know better."

She let the rebuke sink in. Rin half-expected Kushina to be furious at the insult, hair wild and incandescent with rage. But she shrank back, her face pale like it had never felt the caress of sunlight or fresh air. Behind her, Minato-sensei lifted his hand to rest on Kushina's shoulder.

It occurred to her that Kushina was also from a big clan. Minato-sensei was not.

"Your actions will bring about the second Senju Extermination." Uchiha Mikoto said gravely. "Do you think it an accident that Kiri culls her children so diligently even now after house of storms and snow?"

Rin gritted her teeth noting that the woman had done it again, spoken in words with two meanings. She'd always been good at school but standardized education meant much of Konoha's history had been stripped from textbooks for the fear of insulting one clan or another. The Senju were a great clan once, much reduced since the days of the first Hokage. A Senju extermination? How was that possible? Two of Konoha's kages were Senju. Senju Tsunade, slug princess, first among medical nin, was her role model.

Immersed in her thoughts, she did not notice when the discussion wore itself out.

"Mikoto," Kushina asked hesitantly. "Will you tell them?"

Uchiha Mikoto's black eyes softened towards her friend.

"I will see myself out."

The woman slid slippers on her feet, steps slow and measured as though she was counting the exact number she would need to reach home. Rin thought about was the Uchiha's hands and how they had sparked green with chakra before drawing a kunai. And then she was gone.

She turned to her teacher. She, she had to make sure; she thought she might go insane if she didn't know.

"Was she right? Is Obito...?"

Minato-sensei squeezed his eyes shut.

"I don't know."

" _Minato_." Kushina gasped, mouth falling open.

"We can make the report." Her teacher said finally. "If he survived for this long, it's likely he had help."

But who? Who would be brazen enough to keep a Konohan from her borders? Kusa was timid after years of conflict. Ame rarely ventured from their homes. It had to be the Iwa. The Iwa did this. But could she be sure? She thought about the exploding tag in her medical bag, folded carefully into a strip of paper.

The Kamizuru would pay handsomely for information of their lost chunin. Somewhere in Iwa, there must be a Kakashi and Rin waiting for their own Obito.

Right?

"Sensei," She asked, "What is the Senju Extermination[2]?"

Minato-sensei grimaced.

"Aha, it's not a very good story."

"It's what they called the First Shinobi War." Kushina answered her, blowing her nose on the puffy sleeve of her sundress. "A lot of people got jealous of the Senju because of their bloodline ability. Before they knew it, the clan was cut in half. The shoudaime practically died from heartbreak but it didn't stop there."

Kushina's eyes were dull and far away. Staring at something in the distance no one else could see. It reminded her of the patients at the hospital. People who had been in their beds for a long time. Crippled and maimed, their entire world was the restricted wing on the sixth floor and what brought them there in the first place.

Her hand shot out and gripped Kushina's hand. Kushina squeezed back gratefully and continued.

"But it wasn't just the Senju. Anyone with a bloodline ability or a secret technique ended up with targets on their backs. Families gone, compounds emptied, it was awful. The survivors changed their names and married into other families. Most clans in the Fire Country can trace roots back to at least one Senju ancestor."

"But Tsunade-hime…"

Kushina shrugged.

"She's the last one; unless she's got a kid stashed somewhere."

"The books always said that the Uchiha hated the Senju."

Her hand squeezed along with her heartstrings.

"Do you believe that kiddo?"

She didn't know what to believe. Because the ninja rules said to look beneath the underneath.

It made it hard to remember to look _up_.

+++++2+++++

Kakashi woke an hour later.

Drowsy in contemplation, she laid back on the couch and listened as he argued with their teacher. There was a bucket stuck in the ceiling. She would have to remind him to take it down before it fell and broke someone's skull. Likely Kakashi's. She snorted.

"You have to rest. Obito won't..."

"I have to go find him."

"How? He could be anywhere."

"I'll find him."

She sighed.

 _Stupid, stubborn Kakashi._

"We're still at war."

"You can give me orders to go out to the front."

"You know I won't do that."

"But you need me out there."

"You're injured."

"I'm fine!"

 _And where did you get your medical license?_ She thought.

"There is a kill order for every Konohan that appears near Iwa borders." Minato-sensei said reasonably. "When the war ends, we can look for him together."

When the war ends. She silently traced the words. What was that even like? She was barely out of her diapers when the second war ended. Sometimes she wondered what she would even do with peace.

A frantic tapping on the glass made her get up. Frowning, Kushina went to the window and slid it open.

Dawn had barely gripped the horizon as a hawk tumbled into the giant mess of Kakashi's apartment. It seemed lost as it landed on the floor, hooked claws catching against the weave of the tatami mats. Chirping nervously, it jumped onto an upturned coffee table and held a leg out where she spied a scroll tied with a black string.

Minato-sensei swept into the room shadowed by Kakashi who was suffering from a terrible case of bedhead. He appeared sullen, eye puffy but resigned as Rin bullied him into an exam.

"The Uchiha." Kushina confirmed, skimming through the scroll.

Kakashi tensed.

"Let's go."

"Tch, not so fast brat."

Lightning chakra snapped at her palms and she took them off, blowing on them hastily to ease the sting. She glared at Kakashi but he didn't seem to notice, static raising his messy hair to new degrees as his jaws popped under his mask, grinding his molars until she could hear cracking bone.

"Why?"

His question was short, blunted, and sounded more like a sucking wound. Even as she brushed the blisters back in her skin, she stood still, afraid that anything might set off her frazzled teammate.

"We need to prepare." Minato-sensei explained. "This is politics. It won't make a difference to us but it will for them." The man pulled Kakashi aside and pushed him back towards his room. "Go on, get dressed. You are the head of the Hatake clan."

"I am the only member of the Hatake clan." Kakashi growled. "We take this to court, we win."

"But then they have no reason to tell us where Obito is."

"I don't need their help. I'll find him myself!"

"How?"

Minato-sensei was serene. He did like to find teaching moments in the most outrageous moments, her teacher. And Kakashi was failing so badly she wanted to grab him by the ears and shake him until common sense fell out. It was something she should have done weeks ago wandering the borders of Fire and Earth. They were his teammates. Didn't that mean anything?

But she kept her hands to herself. Because Kakashi had shocked her. Worse, he did not even notice.

"Obito was chunin."

"I'd rather not leave this to chance."

She could see the gears turning in his head. Kakashi conceded with a sharp nod.

"Good," Minato-sensei said brightly, clapping his hands. "I know we don't have much time but it would be best if the Uchiha see you as a clan head rather than a jounin captain."

When Kakashi disappeared into his room, Minato-sensei told Kushina, "I'd better get ready too."

Kushina crossed her arms but didn't say anything.

"What should I do?" Rin asked.

Her teacher looked surprised as though it was obvious what Rin should be doing. But she didn't know. She wasn't clan. Her parents weren't even ninja. She felt her heart sink because this was clan matter. So she was surprised when he said, "You're coming with us."

"I am?"

"She is? Minato you moron—" Kushina pulled on his hair in frustration. "Well," She said, catching Rin's eye. "She'll need to wash up first. Let me walk you home Rin-chan." And pushed her out the door.

It was like stepping out into a new world.

She'd been on in the field for weeks. She hadn't the time to catch up or even take a shower in the time it took to find her teacher then Kakashi. Even the sunlight seemed different as it poured through the leaves, lovely and golden whereas the borderlands had been parched for water.

Every tree and blade of grass had been burnt to the roots months ago for the fear of an ambush. Konoha was just so beautiful. And loud. She held her hands to her ears, not quite sure if she wanted to listen to the early morning bustle or let it be. The only people out on the streets were merchants and shop owners setting their wares. Rin stretched surreptitiously, imagining that one or two pairs of scurrying feet belonged to her parents.

Birds cheeped from the undergrowth and she cheeped, annoyed with their song, bright plumage and existence. A man staggered past them in a drunken haze, breaking out into a run as soon as Kushina glared and shooed him off the streets.

"You needed to tell me something Kushina-nee?"

"Aha," the redhead laughed, high-pitched and nervous. "You're so smart Rin!" After a moment of indecision, she declared loudly. "It's a terrible idea dammit. To go I mean, not because you're weak. Minato and Kakashi, they're idiots." She amended, "Okay, they're super smart but that's why they're idiots. You get what I'm saying?"

Rin bit her lip.

"Because I'm not clan."

"Exactly!" They stopped in the middle of the road. A boy on his bicycle swerved around them with an epithet. Kushina gave him the finger. "You're the easiest to come after." She continued as though nothing had happened. "The bastards won't see the strong, fearless chunin, they see a target. And you'll prove every one of them wrong but you don't have to."

"Um..."

Standing in front of Kushina, Rin did not feel strong or fearless.

"I... I wasn't born here ya know? Not in Konoha. I was a refugee. Uzushio was about the collapse and Konoha took me in because I'm an Uzumaki and they figured they could use me or some shit." Kushina grabbed her shoulders. "But you Rin, you're different. You're special—too good to get caught up in this."

That was the problem wasn't it? Everyone had an image of her they wanted to preserve. They thought she was a medic-nin in need of a protection they never even asked if she deserved it.

Rin hugged her.

"Thank you Kushina-nee." She beamed, her cheeks aching. "But you don't need to worry. I'll be fine."

Kushina sniffled.

"Considering the blockheads on your team, I doubt it."

"I, I will think on this." Rin promised shyly. They both knew what it meant. Kushina muttered 'stupid' before slapping her lightly on the back which of course had her almost sprawled on the pavement.

"Kushina-nee?" She asked as she hopped to a stop.

"Eeh?"

"What would you have done if your clan was here?"

Her answer was prompt.

"I would give it up."

+++++2+++++

"There you are! You were supposed to have been back weeks ago—do you know how worried your parents were?!"

Her great-grandmother greeted her from the yard where she was feeding a small flock of white-feathered chicken. At the ripe old age of eighty, she was as spry as ever. Having outlived most of her children, she spent her time helping at her parents' shop or doing chores around the house. She had never approved of Rin's career choice and the old woman's face wrinkled like a brown walnut as she tiptoed past the gates, still shell-shocked in returning to civilian life. "Well?" Her grandmother demanded. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Obito is gone."

She didn't know why she answered. Gone, she said, instead of dead because in her mind, Obito's presence lingered like chips of nail polish under her cuticle, just out of reach. Enough that she knew about it, saw it, but couldn't touch it. She ground her knuckles into her gummy eyes, daring the woman to say something, anything at all.

Her great-grandmother's face slackened in confusion.

"Who?"

She laughed; she couldn't help it.

"Do you even care? Do you even know where I've been all this time?"

"You haven't been home in a month." The old woman said sourly. "For all we know, you might have been dead."

"But I _wasn't_!" Rin stammered. She always did this. Belittling her contributions to the village. Measuring blocks of bean curd against mission allowance as though it meant something. "I was out there, fighting while all of you were..."

"What in spirits has gotten into you?" Her grandmother interrupted. "Wars never stop. It's enough that we bring money into this village but you have to go out there, a girl your age! Playing war games like you're shinobi."

"I can't do nothing!" Rin argued.

"And look where it got your friend." The old woman snorted. "You'll see. Nothing good comes out of running with those hooligans." She nodded at the passing of shadows overhead. It could have been birds or ninja reporting for duty; it could have been ANBU. Lifting a snowy eyebrow, she demanded, "Well? Aren't you going to wash up? Your parents received new shipments from Kiri and they'll need help if they're going to sell the lot before the inspectors come."

Rin felt chilled.

"It's not a game. Not to me."

"You are a young lady." Her grandmother warned. "There is no place for you in that world."

And it was true because _that_ world was filled with clans and bloodlines and individuals with extraordinary abilities.

"Then I'll change that world!" She yelled. "I am a chunin of Konoha. I will make it so that everyone has a place!"

Her hand slipped into a ram seal. It was exhilarating how fast she could run, the chakra on the soles of her feet scratching wood all the way up to her room. She could hear her grandmother in the yard but didn't listen. There was no time for a proper wash; she barely got her face wet and her hair tied before jumping off her bed.

She opened the closet and tugged her chunin uniform off the hangers. Not the weather-beaten spare she used on the field but cloth and fabric for village ceremonies or ambassadorial visits. The collar was itchy and stiff, not yet broken in. She had never worn it before. No, she wore it when she thought Obito was dead and she swallowed, crushing her tears against the back of her hand.

The stairs creaked. She straightened her forehead protector and breathed out to Kakashi's front door.

"Well?" She demanded, half-in-jest, half-scared.

Kakashi shrugged but didn't keep his eyes from crinkling. She smiled back at him, cheeks flush with more than simple excitement as she took a step back, allowing him space. He looked so handsome in his clan colors. In the grey hakama and black haori, he moved like a young lordling rather than a blooded jounin, a spot of diamond in the rough, events of last night smothered in silk. She noticed that their teacher had also put in work taming the wild crest of his hair and gave him a thumbs up. It was something Obito might have done.

Minato-sensei hugged them from behind, wrapping his arms around their shoulders.

"Let's do this."

* * *

 **[1] Mangekyo Sharingan**

Confession time.

I've changed the trigger for the mangekyo sharingan. It's overpowered to begin with but how the entire transformation is based off the trauma of seeing your loved one die is circumstantial at best. Does the grief not count for delivery?

As explained above, in this world people form relations/bonds with one another kind of like the red string of fate. the closer you are to a certain individual, the stronger the bond and stronger the backlash when it unexpectedly snaps.

 **[2] Senju Extermination**

What it says on the tin. The Senju were already powerful when the five shinobi nations were founded. They bought more fear and jealousy with the capture of tailed beasts with the Mokuton bloodline ability. During the first shinobi war, the Senju were hunted down and killed. Along with them, dozens of other bloodlines were wiped out ensuring that no clan would again possess monopoly of the shinobi nation. Survivors buried their names and married into other families. Senju Tsunade is the last known individual to openly carry the name.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Five of Coins  
 **Summary:** Three months after Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi's eye starts bleeding and Rin is forced into a role of shaping the future of Konoha's Team Seven. AU  
 **Rating:** T  
 **Pairing:** None  
 **A.N.:** Woulda had this up earlier-not that much, but Uchiha clan decided to butt in and demand that I tell their side of the story.  
 **Warnings:** Massive headcanon in your face

* * *

All actions had a purpose. The Uchiha kept the peace with the Senju by striking a delicate balance. Nothing was left to chance. Hatake's eye was an impossibility. It disturbed her.

Mikoto flicked the blood from her neck, gently twisting her hair against the cut tassels to make them neat. She had been thinking about having it cut. Once, her hair had been a testament to her skill and pride. But pride often begat a downfall. In her mind's eye, she saw the glimmer of a new dawn. Even the gods could not begrudge her the change.

As she exited Hatake's apartment, four attendants pared themselves from the shadows and knelt at her feet. As her honor guard, Ikkaku took the lead position. At her left was her body servant, Usuda, dove feathers tucked behind his ear, who quickly shrugged the basket onto one elbow with a gnawed expression.

"Ane-ue." Usuda said respectfully before she cut him off.

"Not here." She glanced back at Jounin Hatake's house, unable to shake the unease from her bones. Outwardly, she remained calm and collected but Usuda had served her since they were children.

"Trouble?"

Usuda growled when an Anbu landed dramatically on the roof opposite, staring down through a painted smile.

"Only on days that end with 'y'." She replied pleasantly. "Shall we?"

"Of course." Usuda lowered his head, bending at a perfect ninety-degree angle. She considered ordering him to raise his head. But she was no longer the naïve six-year-old upset at the beating her servant received. Usuda was a liaison between an Uchiha father and an outsider. Since the Uchiha counted their kin in the distaff line[1], Usuda was no blood to them. If it were not for his sharingan eyes, he would have been given away as a foundling. Or-god-forbid, left to be raised by his _mother_.

"Mikoto-sama." Usuda interrupted her steam of thought. "There is news."

"Very well." She allowed. The Anbu lost his advantage when he emerged from the shadows. "How is he?"

"Angry." Usuda admitted, voice hushed as though announcing a shocking thing. "Confused. He looks for..."

"Obito." She sighed, giving name to a boy she once knew.

"Yes, but I cannot understand why."

"They were cousins after all. It is natural his presence... lingers."

Ikkaku returned to report the presence of a crowd ahead.

"We should go around." Her clansman counseled.

"No," She decided. "We must appear as though everything is fine."

Ikkaku tensed. She might as well have told him everything was _not_ fine. But after the amount of chakra Hatake released, Mikoto doubted that it could be seen as anything other than killing intent. And she, a housewife, an Uchiha, had been seen in the middle.

Kushina had asked for a favor and she had given it. There was no time to dwell.

"Mikoto-sama." Usuda urged.

"Not now."

A low whine grated his throat.

The Anbu stalked them through the stars. Never close though always within sight. He kept a respectful enough distance; he might have even been Root.

Her eyes narrowed.

The Sandaime was an old man. His word, it seemed, no longer held weight. Others of the Elder Council, obstinate fools they were, remembered only the disdain their mentor had held for them and not Kagami whose death weighed less than a handful of cinders in their eyes. Their alliance was failing.

Ikkaku and Hanmo went ahead in a whirl of motion as Usuda fell behind her to signify her rank. Mebuki melted back into the shadows. She would have to keep an eye on her.

It never hurt to be careful. Even now when she was married to the official head of the Uchiha clan, she could never purge the feeling that she was being watched. Her paranoia was the one thing Usuda could not carry for her.

"Of course people are watching." Her mother berated her every time she mentioned it. "Your blood is marked by greatness. Keep your back straight. Be proud of what you are."

It did not mean she had to like it.

Ikkaku and Hanmo were waiting at the gates. They exchanged places with guards who disappeared into the night. Mikoto was surprised to see that past dinnertime, the streets were full. People with bowed heads passing whispered conversations like cattle chewing cud.

She felt a passing scorn at seeing her clansmen gathered transparently. They knew that Shisui awoke his mangekyo but did not understand its significance. And this was the right way. The correct way. The knowledge of the mangekyo belonged with the elders of the clan, not common rabble.

Her footsteps quickened. Despite Kushina's warnings, she had been ill-prepared for the folded pinwheel stamped in Hatake's eyes.

Madara's line was cursed. Uzumaki Mito had sworn his blood would never bear fruit when she swallowed the Kyuubi and cut a stillbirth from her womb nine months after—Obito should have been an impossibility; his mangekyo was an impossibility.

They should have never let the Senju raise one of their own. The Senju had been slaughtered the first time they fatally attempted to tie the Uchiha to their destiny. Only Tsunade was left brave enough to keep her family's name. They should have known better than to think it could be different with Obito.

The Will of Fire should have been theirs.

Fugaku received her as she entered the house with a soft apology. She was glad she had been able to warn Uruchi ahead of time. Itachi mentioned innocently that the fat woman with nary a fleck of red in her eyes had come by to set the table and wondered if he could play with her granddaughter, Izumi, if he had the chance.

"Another time dear." Itachi did not press. He was a brilliant child. Quiet, contemplative and thoughtful, free of the competitive fire most boys possessed at his age.

Her son had been born on a full moon. Too much water, the midwife complained after seeing him safely delivered, swaddled and red-faced from the pains of birth. Uchiha were fire.

She turned to her husband.

"I must pray."

A sudden knock to the door heralded the presence of Uchiha Gentarou. She felt his chakra seep through the wood and saw Usuda, stiff-backed, open the door with a curt answer.

"Good evening, Gentarou-sama."

"Usuda. Lady Grandmother requests Mikoto's presence."

Her gaze traveled to her husband and he nodded. She felt utterly resentful that she no longer was tired for seeking his permission even though she was his wife, not an invalid. Their clansmen sought her before the village doctors, even if it meant carrying their mangled limbs across their shoulders. Itachi murmured a short farewell, fingers knotting around the hem of her floral dress.

"Do not stay up too late."

"What a fine wife you make." Gentarou purred mockingly. She scalded her former teammate with a look.

"Speak your business Gentarou."

Gentarou eyed her husband with something close to lazy contempt.

"Mikoto's absence has not gone unnoticed and neither was the killing intent at Jounin Hatake's residence." He answered as he accompanied them to the community hall, filing the edge of his nails against the leather thimble of his thumb. "This isn't like the last time."

"I know my duties." She said coolly.

"Good." Despite his tone, Gentarou did not mean harm. He was one of the few who had voted against her retirement when her betrothal to Fugaku was announced. But the weapons and straps aside his Uchiha armor reminded her how long it had been since she'd last tasted battle on the waning days of the Second Shinobi War.

It had not ended cleanly. No wars ended cleanly. In their retreat, Kiri razed the great forests of Konoha to the ground. They lost many kin.

The official story was that Obito's parents died during war. The father lost to battle, the mother to childbirth. There had been talk of Lady Grandmother formally adopting the child. But that was one thing even she, the mother of the Uchiha, could not turn back. House laws dictated that the mother must be Uchiha. She may have possessed the sharingan but Osen, Obito's mother, was not Uchiha-born and her tainted legacy carried to her son.

When he died, the clan had mourned him and searched for his body. Of course they did—they were not fools. But they could not find the body and the Inuzuka could not find the body.

It did not mean he was dead.

Lady Grandmother was an old woman. The wife of Uchiha Madara himself. It was she who spilt blood across stone to purge their clan of weakness. She was utterly merciless even to her great-granddaughter who had been nineteen years young. Mikoto bowed in respect to the formidable woman as Fugaku took his place at her left hand.

The old woman heard her story while her adopted son, Rikudo, shakily penned the words.

"I suppose blood won in the end." Lady Grandmother laughed, "Wouldn't ol' Mito be spinning in her grave right now if she could see?"

Mikoto said nothing. She did not have to. The Senju were a touchy subject for the old woman. She had lost everything in the founding, her family, her husband, her only daughter. She was soured through and through like a fermented turnip. Resented the village for what it was and what it could have been—a promise.

"The mangekyo." Uchiha Juuzo, fifth seat, said. "That side of the line had not produced talent since..."

"No," Komaki, sitting across from him, interrupted. "But it is not an impossibility. After all, the gods are fair." She concluded, laughing at a private joke.

"What was the boy thinking? Giving away his sharingan?" Voiced the sixth seat, somewhere behind her.

"He wasn't thinking at all." Replied the third.

"You observed it first hand?" Lady Grandmother interrupted, ending the chatter.

"Yes honored grandmother."

She grasped a handful of smoke, flitting her fingers through the whorls. Like ember chasing the last lick of wood through the ashes, it drew a shape. Mikoto was loyal. The Uchiha were loyal; every Uchiha was loyal to the clan. But even Lady Grandmother could not predict what one might do in the name of loyalty.

Light danced in her family's eyes. They bled color from the far edges of their black iris. With a strike of katon, she drew a pinwheel and Rikudo copied its shape in ink.

The sharingan was a tool. It granted the user perfect memory. The fallacy existed in the belief that the object in view was perfect. The end of Lady Grandmother's lips curled around her pipe.

"You are sure."

"Yes."

"Blades? Not fans?"

Contrary to popular belief, Madara was not the first to awaken the mangekyo though he was the most famous. The shape of an individual's sharingan was an indicator of its power. Madara's had been closed, fans, circling a period in the middle as a proof of divine favor—the black sun of when siblings Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi were joined. Izuna's had been open, three flat blades pointing in the three cardinal directions. Shisui's mangekyo had branched into a throwing star. Obito's had folded inward, closed, into a pattern of color known as 'fans'[2].

Very few children had been born since the end of the Second Shinobi war. Uchiha married young and after Madara's revolt, many well-bred girls had been given away to appease the Senju whose matriarch's ire had obliterated him off the ancestral tablets. Shisui, her son, Komaki's daughter and perhaps even Uruchi's grandson bore watching. All four had the accursed Senju blood flowing through their veins, stamped with _her_ mark. They would be great but their loyalties would be called into question if their attention ever strayed towards the outsiders. They thought they'd thrown off Mito's spiteful curse when the Uzumaki died. Obito had been the firstborn, male, when she had sworn Madara would leave no heirs.

Uzumaki Mito had been right but she forgot. Madara's life was closely entwined with her own as though he had married Mito himself.

The smoke dissipated.

Mikoto was a direct-line descendant of Tejima and his wife Horin. Her husband, Fugaku, a second seat, was one of the few left in the clan who could name every ancestor to founding. But they could leave nothing for their son who would grow in a caged world fighting Senju wars for a Senju cause.

She decided. It was a mad gamble. Lives could be won and lost. Kushina's chosen could never be her own. But the clan agreed, he was fair. And no one liked Orochimaru. If she succeeded, she had the future Hokage's favor.

"Blades." She agreed mildly.

The matriarch puffed on her pipe of opium.

"Let Hatake keep the fire he's found. It'll burn out soon enough. But the other one, and his body. Find it. Bring it to me."

"At once, my lady."

+++++3+++++

Rin, Kakashi, and their teacher arrived at the Uchiha compound in style. The two guards at the front gate, dark-haired and dark-eyed, the subtle press of their armor visible under their flared shirts, laughing and shoving at each other for the spot of shade under the shadow, stilled when they approached. They had been expecting a ragtag cell of tired, bedraggled soldiers, not a clan noble flanked by two ninjas. Her face stretched into a grin under her forehead protector. In spite of his early protests, Kakashi wore his clan colors proudly. He flashed his summons demanding they let him through.

"She does not belong here." One of the Uchiha thumbed rudely, thrusting the scroll back in Kakashi's hands.

Rin did not react. She had expected this. The Uchiha couldn't touch the Yellow Flash or the son of the White Fang. But they could get to her. Like Kushina had warned, in their eyes, Nohara Rin was a nobody.

"I am allowed to bring protection." Kakashi replied.

The Uchiha made a highly unflattering noise at the back of his throat, unable to decide if he was insulted or amused.

"A chunin honor guard?"

"I bet she guards something alright."

So the Uchiha weren't immune to chauvinism. But they had given her the perfect opportunity to draw her scalpels, newly sharpened and gleaming in the sunlight.

"Please don't antagonize him." She said simply.

Minato-sensei sighed when the Uchiha backed away.

"Shall we?" Kakashi prompted.

With pinched mouths, the two Uchiha threw open the gates.

"Hatake-san, Namikaze-san, Nohara-san." A man greeted as soon as they stepped through. He tilted his head backwards, tracking the sun. Feathers bristled in his hair as he said, "you are late."

"We came as soon as we could."

The man's expression was cold. She could tell he was a person who expected orders to be carried out to the letter upon receipt. He had not expected them to be late; he probably had been waiting since the break of dawn when the hawk was sent with flowery calligraphy. "I hope you experienced no difficulties." The man said at last.

"None." Kakashi replied, a little wary because the man did not argue the point further. It had been a while for them both since they last spoke to strangers. They couldn't simply kidnap the man and torture him for information. That was barbaric. Inside Konoha, inside the walls, safe, war was a static thing counted by numbers of dead and lost limbs. To yield was to be killed and it took a moment for her to stop playing with the scalpels in her sleeves.

"My name is Uchiha Usuda." The man introduced himself. "I have come on Mikoto-sama's behalf. She apologizes for her absence and I have been instructed to facilitate your meeting with Lady Grandmother."

"Pardon me but, isn't Uchiha Fugaku the head of the Uchiha clan?" Minato-sensei asked hesitantly.

Usuda's answer was blunt.

"Uchiha Fugaku is the head of the outer house."

Rin bit her lips in confusion. She did not understand the social dynamics of the Uchiha clan but from what Usuda was saying, the Uchiha clan had their own counsel made up of the head of each family. A more accurate term for Uchiha Fugaku was an ambassador who represented clan interests to outsiders.

"So I will be speaking to Lady Grandmother." Kakashi concluded, bored.

"Yes." Usuda agreed. "She does not normally see outsiders but as you already know, these are extraordinary circumstances. The sharingan has never before been passed down to an _outsider's_ possession." Once again, his gaze tracked the sun and she looked up as he looked up. She thought she saw shadows. "We must hurry. She dislikes being kept waiting."

+++++3+++++

Rin was fascinated by the glimpse into the Uchiha compound. Having a member of the four founding houses meant that most shinobi households and clans were reluctant to employ them for even the most menial, degrading, D-rank missions. Clan secrets trumped humiliation and Rin guessed she missed out on more than her share of politics when she was genin.

But her jaws dropped when she saw the carved wooden pieces mounted on tops of roofs. Idols dressed in gaudy shades of red, white and yellow. The three on top of the communal hall were even plated with real gold.

Konoha did not have an official religion. Rin's family prayed every year for good rains and pregnant rivers but nothing elaborate. Succession of refugees had made for different wares and colorful New Years. And apparently, Uchiha were pagans.

"Is this allowed?" She asked timidly, tugging on her teacher's sleeve.

"They're just decorations." Minato-sensei assured her. "No harm meant."

She nodded. If her teacher thought it was alright, it must be alright. But she could not be sure that the hollowed eyes held now powers as she ducked under the awning, unable to look at the rows and rows of Uchiha who had gathered to spectate.

"This is where I leave you." Usuda said in a low voice. "Hatake-sama, an advice, if I may."

From where she was standing, she only saw the languid slope of her teammate's neck. She couldn't see his face.

 _"Do not reveal the mangekyo."_

Had she imagined it? Minato-sensei said nothing. Kakashi stepped forward as the doors swung open.

Usuda knelt at their feet.

"Lord Hatake has arrived."

Rin hurriedly kicked her shoes off. She thought, like the outside, the Uchiha were drowning themselves in opulence and color. But the Uchiha was a warrior clan. It took her a moment to adjust to the candlelit dark. The inside of the communal hall was minimalistic. Cold. The austere wooden pillars surprised her as much as they would have had they been made of solid gold.

Under the solemn faces of their carved idols, the Uchiha were waiting for them. They sat in two rows, one down the left and the other to the right. She recognized Mikoto who was fourth seat down from the right. At the center, furthest from the door, sat an old woman with a fan folded across her lap. A man leaned to bring her pipe to her lips and she sucked, poisoning the air like a fat toad.

"Jounin Hatake—" started a man five seats down from the old woman.

"Hatake Kakashi." Her teammate corrected.

Rin swallowed a nervous giggle.

"We apologize for the lateness of our arrival. Your summons were... unexpected." Minato-sensei continued smoothly.

Lady Grandmother frowned at Kakashi.

"Do you know why I have summoned you?"

"I can hazard a guess." Kakashi said flippantly, hooking a thumb under his forehead protector. His sharingan eye glared like Mars in summer and the gathered Uchiha drew together, their eyes flickering red one by one by one. The only one who did not was a little boy who sat closest to them at the end of the line, his back a straight spear to cut dragonflies, cold hands wrung white in his sleeves.

She realized he could only be Shisui. The prodigy. Obito's cousin. The second inheritor of her teammate's will. He was _young_.

"You should have come to us immediately." Reprimanded a man six seats down to the left. "Why have you kept this a secret?"

Kakashi shrugged. She felt his chakra shake and spill like a miniature storm cloud, shocking his hair to silver brightness. Minato-sensei winced. The Uchiha stared like wolves.

"The secret is not mine to tell."

"The sharingan is not yours to keep."

Lady Grandmother was ancient. The smoke from her pipe could not hide what she was. She was a goddess of her domain. The marble centerpiece to the pagan idols the Uchiha worshipped.

"Do you know why the Uchiha are forbidden from setting foot outside these walls?[3] It is because we are _feared_. How many do you think wish to take our power for their own? Yet you flaunt it freely. You bring us destruction. You bring us death."

Kakashi slammed his forehead protector down. "Nobody knows." He insisted fiercely. She knew for a fact he had killed everyone else who had dared to catch glimpse of Obito's gift. "Nobody has to know."

"For now." A woman remarked smugly.

" _I can bring him back_."

She stopped breathing. Felt the silence spread like butter across a hot pan. This had not been agreed upon and she couldn't hiss and pinch Kakashi in the side like she usually did whenever he or Obito, always Obito because she'd loved Kakashi and Obito loved her, was attuned to her, body tilted as though he was facing the sun, put a foot in his mouth.

The Uchiha took their measure with their shockingly red eyes. The candles flickered through no fault of their own. Drops of hot wax melted down the thick stalks and fused with the wood.

"Tell me child." The old woman asked. "How will you do that?"

"I have his eyes." Kakashi replied. "We know he... he was alive. He survived. He's likely in enemy hands. I will crush them."

"You were not as nearly as passionate about your friendships before." Uchiha Mikoto artlessly observed.

"If we allow it, will you return the eye?" A man questioned from her opposite. She guessed that he was Uchiha Fugaku.

"The eye belongs to Obito." Kakashi insisted.

"Obito was Uchiha; his eyes belong to his family." The man on the sixth seat argued.

"Obito was an orphan was he not?" Her teammate was as quick with words as he was with swords. Rin stifled a sigh. Her insides twisted in knots. She didn't know whether to be afraid or exasperated. At this rate, she would need an open heart surgery to get everything sorted out.

Minato-sensei gave her a wink and she discreetly rolled her eyes away from the ember-glow of the Uchiha. "He left no will save this. He left it to me. Your family has no right."

"Then why ask?" Asked the woman five seats down.

"Formality. I take this to court. You lose. You knew he was alive."

Rin flinched. Kakashi was not a people person. She knew that. Everyone knew that. But she did not expect him to be so blunt about it. She snuck another furtive look at her teacher but he said nothing. Uchiha Mikoto said nothing. The woman had warned Kakashi not to reveal the mangekyo but why? She racked her brains for even a hint of treachery. Nobility be damned, she was not about to lose another friend.

"Obito pledged his life to protect the village. He was _my_ chunin."

"Such antiquated laws should be abolished." Muttered the man on the sixth seat.

"Then bring it up in the next council meeting." Kakashi snapped. "You were happy enough when Konoha took him off your hands."

"Kakashi..." Minato-sensei began.

"Insolence." Lady Grandmother sighed. "Do you even know the disaster you possess? Know that Obito's bloodline was a forfeit. It was only by the grace of god the mangekyo did not take possession of him while he was alive."

"But he was alive. You abandoned him."

"As did you."

The fan opened and vanished the smoke. Kakashi's voice fell into a hush.

"I failed him." He acknowledged. Propriety or not, Rin moved to sit beside him. She bumped his shoulder and felt him push back in gratitude. "I will not fail him again."

" _This is all academic_."

" _This sets the wrong precedent_."

"We deny your motion."

Kakashi jerked his head up when a man spoke. He sat next to Lady Grandmother, holding a pipe in one hand and a bag of opium in another. "But we are not cruel. You have suffered enough. The eye is yours. But Uchiha Obito belongs to us."

She held her tongue.

And bit down until it bled into her mouth.

+++++3+++++

Usuda was waiting outside.

Rin had not realized so much time had passed. She blinked several times, chasing the dark spots from her eyes. Beside her, Minato-sensei attempted to share tender platitudes and it was all she could do from holding her ears shut and scream in frustration.

"Shisui-sama." Usuda bowed when the doors opened behind her, followed by a black silhouette of a boy who'd sat near them inside. For a wild moment, she saw his gritted teeth and thought of Obito fumbling with excuses for being late.

"Uchiha Shisui." The name was like a slap to her face. She took a step back, shaken, at the face soft with youth and a head full of black curls.

"Aye," the boy grunted. "You took my cousin's eye."

"You want it back?" Kakashi asked casually, willing to fight for it—ready to fight for it. Minato-sensei rested his hand on her teammate's shoulder, a thumb threatening to scrape the nerve point next to his pulse. Kakashi crossed his arms and scowled.

"Kakashi." Minato-sensei chided. "Be nice."

"It's fine." Shisui shrugged, giving their blond teacher an odd look. "I don't want the eye. He gave it to you."

"Is there something we can help you with?" Rin asked when it became clear nobody else would.

"We're going to burn Obito's stuff today." Usuda gasped and was duly ignored. "I thought you might want some of his things."

"Oh." Because the Uchiha didn't want Obito to come back all twisted and evil and the confession impressed upon her just how much the Uchiha had known. "Okay." She agreed, careful not to look at Kakashi or their teacher. "Thank you."

+++++3+++++

Obito's house sat empty, south-facing, near the edge of the property where a stone wall divided the Uchiha from the rest of the village. Rin spied the scuff marks on the doorstep, the uneven polish of a floor that had been painted over one too many times. In the yard, a training dummy grinned cheerily despite its broken neck. And she thought, Obito was here. Obito had been here.

The rooms were small, the staircase narrow as though the house remembered its occupant numbered one. Usuda hesitated in the doorway, looking for words to say, trying to stop them before he was quelled by the weight of a ten-year-old's glare. The man grudgingly explained that the house had once belonged to Obito's late father. He had shared it with his brother before they were married off. The house had somehow fallen into Obito's possession and Shisui's. Shisui was Obito's closest blood relative.

Rin noticed how carefully Usuda parsed words and knew that the omitted names were not mistakes. Like a broody hen, he clucked that the clan had been too soft on Obito. Obito should have never been sent to the Academy.

Her stomach flopped. She couldn't imagine her team without Obito. Even now, he was what held the team together in their shared grief. Rin hurried up the stairs after Kakashi.

Tracks of dust motes danced wreathed in golden flames. She pushed into the light, fearful and eager that she might see his face. But she didn't. It was warm inside. As though he had never left. In the three months they had been apart, his memories had grown to fill an entire room and she teared up, blaming the dust.

Things came to head when she saw the dirty bandages unrolled at the foot of the bed. Anyone else would have cut it off with a pair of scissors. Obito had taken the time to unspool the scratchy threads and his devotion hurt. He was dead and his actions hurt.

Kakashi stood unmoved as she sniffled and she thought angrily—he told you to take care of me. _Me_ Kakashi, dammit.

She hastily dabbed her eyes on her sleeve, feeling the cotton catch her eyelashes.

"Do your parents know you've called us here?" Kakashi asked dully.

Shisui answered, "My parents are dead. Help yourself."

"Are you sure?" She asked uncertainly.

The boy pinned her with a flat look. "No. I keep thinking that he's going to come back and wonder where his things are. Then he'll be mad at me because I gave everything away."

"Oh um," She wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Sorry." She finished lamely.

Hastily changing the subject, she turned to Kakashi with an affected cheer. "So, do you want anything?"

"No."

"Oh."

Kakashi walked towards the window. Traced the frames and pushed the window open. The evening air smelled wrong.

"They're not locked. I thought..." He stopped when he saw Minato-sensei and Usuda.

"This was his room." Usuda announced unnecessarily. The man seemed unhappy but he did not dare raise his voice against Shisui. She was starting to learn blood meant everything in a clan. Turning her gaze, she saw Shisui stare back at her with his pitch black eyes. Her question tripped on her tongue and became stuck between her teeth.

Obito's walls were filled with pictures, not posters and flyers and other war paraphernalia of a child soldier, but crisp, framed photographs like he had lead a second life through the lens. Some of it was of their year mates, out of focus, out of context, silly, hidden behind the shadow of his thumb. Others were of them, a little shorter, younger. Maybe even happier.

Minato-sensei flipped through the volumes on the shelf, even the one labeled 'do not open' and said, "I think Kushina might appreciate these. Did you guys find what you were looking for?"

Yes. It sat heavy in her pockets. But she took the framed photo off Obito's desk anyway.

Kakashi was staring.

+++++3+++++

Kushina threw open her door and dragged her inside.

"Thank god you're here—you have to stop them."

"Stop what?" She asked, bewildered as her feet slid across the wood.

She heard, "They won't be expecting it." From Kakashi. "They'll be too busy defending the borders now that Kumo's reclaimed Kusa. Sensei please, let me do this."

"No."

There were new additions adorning the hallway. Pictures Obito took. Kushina had lovingly stuck them inside frames that would hide the blurry edge of a thumb and she smiled helplessly as a curtain of red hair fell into her eyes and she heard her teammates argue away from her, without her.

"But why?" Kakashi demanded.

"Because the war will end."

It meant nothing to them, to her, because war was familiar. There was no trust when the next stranger could be an enemy ninja in disguise. They were raised to fight; they couldn't remember a world without conflict.

"Obito is there." Kakashi barked. "He's been there for months and we didn't even, sensei, please."

"He's dead Kakashi. His sacrifice will mean nothing if you do this."

The finality of their teacher's decision struck Rin with an awful pity. She pushed herself away from Kushina and watched as Kakashi and Minato-sensei wrapped up their conversation. She smiled weakly when they noticed her presence but her heart wasn't in it. Kakashi turned to her with the same look he had when they returned down one man, an eye burning in his socket, and their friend hastily buried under mounds of foreign earth. It was a look that said _help me_.

She shrank back. What was she even supposed to say? Kakashi was the team leader. Kakashi was the killer. She picked up the broken pieces after. If he didn't know what to do, how did she?

"We know the area sensei." She tried. "We'll be careful."

Minato-sensei shook his head. "Kannabi Bridge is at the heart of the enemy territory."

"We are ninja." It was their job.

"I know. But not this. I can't allow you to do this."

"Because you're a kage-elect." Kakashi said in defeat.

Minato-sensei did not deny it.

Rin was glad for her teacher. She really was. But at the same time, she was hurt. Why hadn't he said anything? Why didn't they tell her anything?

"Kakashi, it's more complic—"

Her teammate shook his head.

"Whatever. I don't want to hear it. We're done here."

+++++3+++++

After Kakashi left, they had dinner. It was a mostly silent affair. Only Minato-sensei talked while Rin stewed in a crisis of faith and her place in the world. She was sorry she'd ever gotten out of bed that morning. Yesterday morning. Kushina had been right and maybe her grandmother was right too.

Rin cheered herself with the thought it was certainly too late for anyone to be up. Her parents were merchants. They got up with the rooster's crow and they liked it.

Kakashi suddenly landed in front of her.

Once she'd exhausted her store of expletives, learned at her grandmother's knee while minding the market stands, she browbeat her teammate into submission.

"Where the hell have you been?!"

"I can't talk long." Kakashi stammered. "I came to say goodbye."

"You _what_?"

"I'm going after him."

The day was only getting worse.

"Ka-ka-shi." She pronounced, dragging him close. "Are you out of your _mind_?!"

"Keep it down." He hissed. "This is the only chance I have."

"The only chance—" she stopped. "You're serious. Of course you are. Did you even hear what Minato-sensei said?"

"Did you?" Kakashi shot back. "It's not like we haven't done this before."

"Except we don't have permission." Nothing made sense anymore. _Kakashi_ was going against orders. He wasn't supposed to change. It would mean that she had to change and she wasn't sure if she was.

Ready.

"He's waited long enough."

"Think Kakashi. You'll have no reinforcements. No help." She looked over his uniform, a change from the form-fitting clothes and leather. Hilariously empty-handed like he was going to cook, Kakashi had on occasion burnt water, or live on soldier pills.

"I don't care."

"It's like talking to a brick wall." She despaired. "Am I the only one who thinks we've lost the entire plot?" Kakashi blinked back at her, unimpressed. "Alright, you're really going to do this."

"Yes."

"And I have to stop you because this is stupid."

"You don't agree." And damn him if he wasn't giving her the eyes again. He hadn't cared before _he_ died and made him promise on _his_ grave that he would take care of her. She wished she was smart. Just so she could get a glimpse of the mind of a genius Kakashi supposedly had.

"That's not what I said—stop putting words in my mouth."

"I'm going to bring him home." He swore.

"Minato-sensei said, the war is ending."

Kakashi laughed, brittle-edged. And it was providence as he said the words, "The war will never end. The Iwa hate us. They will never let him go."

"You make it sound like he's alive." She said weakly. "Kakashi, please, wait one more day. He will understand."

"I can't." Kakashi's voice cracked into a thousand pieces. Her teammate wasn't even looking at her anymore. He never saw her.

He leaned forward, close enough to kiss.

His eyes were open.

* * *

[1] Uchiha are matrilineal and count their kin through the mother's side of the family. Sharingan users born to non-Uchiha mothers may be adopted into a family as servants or even branch members if they prove to be powerful enough.

[2] This is a little difficult to explain without the use of visual aids. If there is no red in the blades/commas of the mangekyo, it is called 'blades'. If there is red in the blades/commas of the mangekyo, it is called a 'fan'. The patterns are not inherited and are unique to each individual.

For simplicity's sake, example of blades include: Uchiha Shin, Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Shisui, Uchiha Izuna

Examples of fans include: Uchiha Obito, Uchiha Madara

Inverted color schemes like Uchiha Sasuke's mangekyo and several of the anime-only characters are also called fans.

The Uchiha believe that the pattern of a mangekyo can foresee the future.

[3] Probably mentioned before but I'll say it again because this is basically my excuse to shove all the headcanons I have about the Uchiha into one fic.

The Uchiha are uncommon in the anime and manga even before the massacre. Unlike the Hyuuga, the other major clan with a bloodline ability, they do not use cursed seals to control access to their cadet clan. Either the Uchiha:

a. Were reasonably confident none of them would ever end up in the frontlines. The Uchiha seem to keep mostly to the village in their police work and do not take active roles during war. The only exception to this is Uchiha Kagami and Uchiha Obito.

b. Were confident that those who did end up in the frontlines would never activate the sharingan vs. strong enough they'd get out of whatever mess they ended up.

c. Did use some kind of a seal to destroy the body upon death.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Five of Coins  
 **Summary:** Three months after Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi's eye starts bleeding and Rin is forced into a role of shaping the future of Konoha's Team Seven. AU  
 **Rating:** T  
 **Pairing:** None  
 **A.N.:** So this story gets updated every year? Is that what's happening? I'm so sorry for the wait. I have no excuse. Absolutely none.  
 **Warnings:** Misuse of sharingan

* * *

In Kakashi's dreams, Minato-sensei's prophesy bore fruit. The war ended. Obito lived.

Rin knew she had to look away. Obito threw his head back, cackling at a private joke. With his back to her, she couldn't see the emptiness in his left eye or the ragged stump of his body. His face was scarred, whole, ruined, bleeding, where wet she stabbed her scalpel and dug deep.

The seven-year-war let its curtains down for intermission and she was wandering like a peanut vendor between the aisles. Her hands were scoured clean. Nails French-tipped and smooth. Kakashi smelled like soap.

She told him. "Don't do this again."

Kakashi nodded in acceptance.

"You were always much better at this." He said with regret. "The Iwa chose wrong."

Their love wasn't a grand gesture, something born out of fairy tales. He couldn't make her blush. He didn't make her heart skip.

Obito called them boring and bought the first round.

She was happy; she accepted the frothy brew and drank until her throat burned.

"Rin." Obito hugged her around her shoulders and she pushed him away, repulsed.

She did not want him to touch her. She loved him for being alive and well instead of six feet under. She didn't think she could ever forgive the Iwa the insult of taking her teammate away. Yet, she did not want him to touch her. His hands were cold and white and full of worms. She thought if they touched, he might disappear.

Obito stared at her with a wounded expression.

"This is your fault."

He jerked backwards, features blinding like the edge of the sun. She could not keep her eyes on him. She could not tell if he had one eye or two, tall or short, living or dead.

"Kakashi!"

She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn't sure what she would see but knew it to be terror.

"Stop!"

Kakashi explained.

"Obito was the best of us, he cannot be anything else. That's why you and I will do the rest."

Rin blamed herself. Kakashi was her teammate.

"Let me help Kakashi. You can't do this on your own."

"It's too late."

"Why?!" She burst out. "Because I love you?!"

He did not react to her confession. Instead, he smiled. With his eyes. A foreign expression across his handsome face.

"Because I'm already gone."

+++++4+++++

Rin sat up in tears when her grandmother jerked on her big toe. She kicked and her grandmother glared back from under her many wrinkles and the large mole on her left brow before scoffing, always disappointed in her, disappointed what Konoha could offer.

He grandmother was a survivor. She'd seen friends, cousins, siblings forcibly conscripted as soldiers. Fields abandoned because there was no one to till the earth. Trees stripped bare from wars that stretched from end to end.

She had proudly seen her daughter, her only surviving child, married to a merchant with better prospects that eking out a living under the thumb of whomever drew a map of the river which brought more corpses than fish. Her grandmother knew war and was disappointed this was the best her granddaughter could manage.

"There are men outside asking for you girl. What have you done? The sun's been up past the fourth cock-crow and you are still in bed!"

Rin was in bed. She struggled to think. She came back from her mission two days ago. Yesterday, she had been at the Uchiha Compound. The fourth cock-crow. It meant that it was past eight in the morning. Surely her sense of time was off. She was used to tracking hours through the movement of the sun and there was no sun overhead, just a spackled ceiling. No stars to guide her by. She rubbed her eyes and peeled back her sheets. Her grandmother scuttled around the side of her bed and pinched the flesh of her thighs.

She yelped and fed chakra to the soles of her feet, balancing on the wall of her room. Her grandmother's chickens were outside, scratching dirt. Two chunin were watching them in disinterest. Her vision narrowed. The two chunin had been sent to collect her.

For a moment, she bristled at the insult. She had seen Kakashi cut throats for less.

She slapped her cheeks and her grandmother said sardonically, "I'll tell them you're getting ready shall I?'

"Yes please." Rin said with a hint of desperation and sniffed under her arm pits.

She was rank. Her grandmother grimaced at the way she smelled her pits. Rin had been outside. She had just left Kakashi's house. They were living together. They loved each other. It wasn't romantic but they loved each other.

What happened last night?

It was too late for a shower but a little dirt never hurt. While the two chunin were sufficiently distracted, she pulled chakra to her feet and launched herself out the window.

+++++4+++++

"Rin!" Minato-sensei greeted her in wide-eyed surprise. "Where's Ranka and Hijiri? I sent them to escort you."

"Sensei, what's going on?"

There were others in the room. She blushed, knowing how she must look. But she had followed the only chakra she recognized. Minato-sensei's chakra had been a beacon to her, a bright light at the center of a universe that had gone horribly awry. Obito was dead. She could not find Kakashi. But she saw him.

Slowly, the haze of early morning ebbed away. She was horrified to realize that her sensei was not alone. In the room with him, she recognized familiar faces. Faces she could not afford to insult. Jiraiya, the toad sage, Orochimaru, the brightest mind of his generation.

She winced as her knees hit the floor hard.

"Hokage-sama, I apologize for my rude interruption."

"Rin, why did you run?" Her teacher asked again, lifting her chin when she did not respond.

"Look at her eyes." Orochimaru said nonchalantly.

"What about her eyes?"

Her eyes were fine. It was stupid Kakashi who had an eye missing. It was the Uchiha who were obsessed with bloodlines and eyes.

"Kai!"

The unsealing was explosive and punched the air from her lungs. She crumpled to the floor, heart fluttering like a caged bird inside her ribs. Sensei quickly swept her into his arms and threw his sensei an admonishing glare.

"Kakashi..." She sniffled. She wiped her eyes, gave up when the back of her hands became too wet. She dug her nails into the flame-patterned sleeves. "He left." She spat, like she'd swallowed something foul.

"Yes Rin. Do you know what happened?"

"He wanted to find Obito." There was an imperceptible flinch. "He went without me."

And the more terrifying thought. "He left me."

"We know."

Clearly there were matters more important than a girl's broken heart because a woman stepped forward with a condescending sniff, Rin blushed when she recognized the clan markings striping her face. Red tattoos in shape of fangs down each cheek. Unlike her purple stripes, the fangs held meaning. The woman was an Inuzuka, as wild as her hair and the monster that panted beside her.

She flashed her teeth in a chagrined grimace.

"We lost his scent near the Uchiha compound." The Inuzuka reported sourly, patting her monstrous dog on the back. She did not elaborate. Her clan dealt in information. Any informant worth their salt would not risk their reputation for anything, not even for the Hokage. In times of war, the Inuzuka had kept its children from the frontlines by serving as spies. She suspected this wasn't the first time clan politics kept information from the Third.

"Thank you Tsume."

The bispecled man shrugged when called upon.

"Aburame-san?"

The man shrugged.

"My insects were unable to penetrate further."

To prevent spies, there were several measures active ninja employed to keep others from listening in on them. But she had just been to the Uchiha Compound. No more than half of them could be shinobi. Even less as active members. Clans practiced secrecy. This was paranoia.

"You think they helped him?" She gulped.

"We can't rule anything out."

"It's a simple enough matter to investigate." Orochimaru pointed out. "If I were..."

"No." The Hokage denied him. "Matters with the Uchiha clan are delicate. We cannot afford to accuse them of treason."

"My student?" Minato-sensei asked inquiringly.

"I am sorry. From this day forth, Hatake Kakashi is a traitor."

+++++4+++++

Losing Kakashi was a hard blow.

With Kakashi gone, Minato-sensei locked in ongoing sessions to see to the end of the war, her duties as an individual became limited. She also had paid leave overdue. But she couldn't bear sitting around the house or at the market, selling spices to gossip that would drive her insane.

Instead, she volunteered at the hospital. She observed the increments of time in the layer of bandages, lost limbs and knitted flesh. Doctors praised her for her level-headedness and decision.

"Rin, can you..."

"Oh of course."

"Oh thank god." The doctor said before jumping nervously. She didn't blame him. The doctor on call was infamous for her prickly attitude. On her good days, it was much safer to hug a cactus. From what Rin had seen, Dr. Homura had no friends. She seemed to spend her entire time at the hospital, cussing out the patients and orderlies and nurses in the order of precedence.

She gulped a little. But Dr. Homura was a good doctor. Even great. Even without chakra, her hand seemed to seamlessly seal wounded flesh back in place. She would stop at nothing to get her patient well at that was something Rin couldn't help but admire.

"Dr. Homura."

The woman scowled immediately.

"Good god, they gave me you? How did you end up in this clusterfuck?" She shook her head. "No helping it I suppose. How good are your hands kid?"

Dr. Homura was a woman in her late thirties. She wore a standard docs coat with shortened sleeves, a bright blue scrubs beneath paired with a tasteful skirt. She could have just come out of a surgery and not had a hair out of place. Her eyebrows lifted in jerky movements daring anyone to pursue that line of thought, a permanent frown marring her face and clear a room with the force of her glare. Despite her age, rank and gender, most doctors respected her decision. While she would never be called Tsunade's second coming, she came close. And for a civilian with talent in manipulating chakra, that was high praise indeed.

"I've been out on the field for weeks." Rin replied. "I can handle myself."

"Hmph, you haven't seen anything yet."

When she was a girl volunteering as an assistant, she'd never been allowed on the sixth floor. Logically, she knew where it was. She knew that the sixth floor was the fifth and the fifth floor was actually the fourth, right above the third, because superstition thought number four sounded too close to death.

When the door opened to admit her into the large reception area, she saw rows and rows of stretchers with people in them, moaning in pain or worse, catatonic with only a bedpan to keep them company. At her startled look, Dr. Homura shrugged "we ran out of beds."

"Ah, doctor!"

A teenager came up to them, her height, longer hair, and broad shoulders that made her eyes stray.

"Oh hello." He greeted, folding his hands into a reverse-dog. "My name is Kizaku Oban, pleased to meet you."

"Nohara Rin," She signed back. "The pleasure is mine."

"Now that we're all acquainted," The doctor drawled, "how is the floor?"

Oban was all business as he briskly listed the critical patients, problems that required attention and a list of patients to be discharged. Rin's head spun as she tried to keep track. She had an armful of clipboards by the time they had made the rounds around the beds and stretchers.

The patients on the sixth floor were hurt and fearful. They kept staring at her as though she'd draw a scalpel and steal their liver when all she wanted to do was check their bandages and redress their wounds.

They did not like to be touched. She understood their reluctance but it made her job nearly impossible.

"Fudou-san." Rin said in exasperation as the pale-haired chunin wailed. He knocked her clipboard to the floor and at the clattering sound, groans rose from the neighboring bed.

"Enough." Dr. Homura said firmly, appearing out of nowhere. "Hold him down."

Oban pinned Fudou to his bed.

"Fudou-san, you're disturbing other patients." He admonished and with a brush of fingertips, diffused the chakra from the chunin's glowing veins.

Rin's hair rose and she unconsciously took a step back, left foot pivoting for easy movement as her hand searched for scalpels pinned in her sleeves.

Fudou settled down with a hiccup, curling up into a fetal position.

Homura huffed.

"Look kid, you're new so I'll let you off with a warming this time. We are not in the business of coddling idiots."

"But."

She protested and swallowed the words as Homura's expression grew grim.

"We only have three doctors working this floor. Every second we waste, a patient loses a limb. We're not in the business of making them feel better. We're in the middle of a war. We're just here to make sure they're battle ready by the time their name comes up again in the roster."

"I understand." Rin said in defeat and Homura turned to attend the other patients, the clink of metal under the shifting cloth weighed with more promise than had her forehead been branded with a leaf. Oban gave her a sympathetic glance, his face infinitely patient and kind like a stone Buddha.

She kind of wanted to punch him a little.

"It's alright Nohara-san. Homura-san is really kind. It's hard for her sometimes knowing that they're going to end up back here. This is Fudou-san's fourth stay with us. He'll be fine."

"How can you say that?"

"Sometimes, this is all we have to keep going." He said gently. "May I?"

She nodded, not quite understanding what she was agreeing to. Oban gathered a ball of chakra in the palm of his hand and rubbed it, a bit like a salve, into her skin and her bones. Her flesh prickled like it had fallen asleep and was just beginning to wake. It was not unpleasant. But it was strange and unfamiliar.

"There." Oban said with a note of satisfaction. "I noticed um." He blushed, a rosy flush spilling down his neck.

"Yes?"

"Your arm, you should have gotten it checked out."

She opened her mouth to argue. She had gotten it checked out. It was fine.

Except no. In the confusion of Obito's mangekyo, she'd satisfied herself by eyeballing it. She'd dislocated her arm trying to tear past the earth. She'd popped it back in when Kakashi was busy rigging the shack with explosives. It was sore. But that was to be expected. There was nothing for it except rest and painkillers.

"You're a ninja." Rin blurted out.

Oban laughed lightly. "I'm not. There are plenty of healers who can manipulate chakra."

"But you." She cringed, waiting for Dr. Homura to jump out and yell at her again. Noblemen did not fight. Children did not fight. But they were fourteen, almost adults in the eyes of the law. Clearly, Oban knew how to fight. She could read his movements. She didn't know why he was at the hospital when she could have been an asset to a team.

"I have no gift for war Nohara-san." Oban said softly. "My squad leader failed me. He saved my life. My parents, they don't want me to fight either. They are shinobi. I pray every day for their safe return. I want to help people and if it comes down to it, I will defend the people I care about. But this war is wrong."

"Wrong?" The thought startled her. "We're trying to defend ourselves."

"From whom though?" Oban asked frankly. "At what cost?"

She mulled over this.

"I don't want to hurt people Nohara-san."

But I do. She thought to herself. Startled when she thought it. Surprised that she had thought it. There were people she wanted to hurt.

+++++4+++++

In the morning, Rin cringed at her expression as she brushed her teeth. She could see that her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed even through the steam of the shower. She couldn't go in like this. It was unprofessional. She'd be laughed out of ER.

Spitting toothpaste from her mouth, she knocked the toothbrush in her cup. The great thing about being able to control her chakra was that she's never worried about a pimple on an important day. Yawning, she clumsily packed her lunch in a bag and sank into her boots. Sandals were a great idea until a patient puked or pissed all over them. Her grandmother glared at her in disapproval as her pet chickens pecked the dirt.

She waved.

+++++4+++++

At lunch, she sat next Oban. Oban's family had come from near the south of the border in the Tea Country. He stood out. But despite being an able-bodied fourteen year old, he was not a ninja.

"Are you sure you're not from Lightning?" She had seen lightning ninja. They were tall and muscular compared to the people in the lowlands. But their skins were dark while Oban was white as milk. She'd never met anyone like Oban before. He seemed so cheerful when everyone else seemed worn down, face taut with apprehension.

Oban laughed genially, scrawling something down in a perfect script that might as well been printed. Scars scored his knuckles, his wrist corded with muscle and fingers thick with calluses that could have only come from shurikenjutsu. His hair was overlong which sat oddly, gathering in a wavy mane on the back of his neck. He looked nothing like Obito, whom, like all Uchiha, had been small for his age, fine-boned. But he reminded her of him.

"He's gay." Dr. Homura said disparagingly when she noticed that Rin was looking.

"Wha... what?" Rin stuttered. "You, you can't just...!"

"Oban is from a little island called Ryoku. They marry them off young there. Who knows, he might have adopted an orphan or two." Her smile was like a knife. "Boys like Oban, they need keepers."

Rin did not understand. Oban had been nothing but a perfect gentleman to her. At her baffled expression, Dr. Homura coughed a short laugh and said, "Nurses gossip as much as fishwives. Doctors are worse."

Expression softening, Dr. Homura assured her.

"Don't worry kid, you're not the first one to get caught looking at him."

Mortified, Rin squeaked "You too?"

"That would be telling."

Dr. Homura winked and handed her a stack of patient files. "I want these sorted by the date of admission. You have an hour."

+++++4+++++

Despite Minato's optimistic forecast, the world continued to shit on them.

The war dragged on. Just because the lands were depleted did not mean that people did not kill. Negotiations were ongoing. It took time for news to trickle down, longer for feuds to stop, for revenge killings and honor killings to end. Thoughts of Kakashi fell to the wayside. She only observed the passage of time in the knitted bones and flesh.

At the memorial stone, she didn't talk to Obito. What was the point? She knew Obito wasn't there. Obito wasn't where they had left him; she was allowed that much through a toad who'd coughed smoke into her sensei's face when summoned, arm hanging with bite marks.

She began a count of limbs she'd hacked off since the start of the year. Fifteen was a magical number in which the village laws told her she was fully grown, no longer a child. She did not feel any different. She did not feel stronger or confident. In contrast, she'd grown complacent, allowing Kurenai to get a drop on her.

The kunoichi seemed unruffled to have a scalpel lined against her neck. In contrast, she seemed almost impressed that Rin was able to counter at all. The red in her eyes swirled like the pinwheels of a sharingan. Inwardly, Rin shuddered.

"Nohara-san, are you alright?!"

In the year they've worked together, she could not get Oban to drop the honorific. The door folded inwards with a mighty shove. Splinters sparked in the air and Kurenai jumped back, wide-eyed.

"Oh, um, hello." Oban immediately blushed. No one could have guessed that the mild, bookish nurse had folded the door with his bare hands. Kurenai narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Oban, Kizaku Oban. Nice to meet you."

"It's fine." Rin told Kurenai. "He's a friend."

"I'm sorry, it's just that I felt your chakra." Oban helplessly drew a shape in the air.

"Do you always keep such close eye on your comrades?" Kurenai asked.

"Only when they need it." Oban answered honestly.

Rin rolled her eyes.

"Come on Kurenai, you'll make Asuma jealous."

Kurenai blushed like a tomato. Before she could make denials, Rin lined her soles with chakra and launched herself into the air.

+++++4+++++

Rin had visitors. Sometimes. Some were social calls, little gossip and tidbits of information spread around like a bowl of sweets on Shichi-Go-San. Others were necessary like when Asuma broke both his ankles and was hobbling around on his knees against medical advice.

"That the dragon lady?"

"You cannot be serious."

Asuma's gaze was admiring as he watched Dr. Homura chew out a colleague over a patient. She threw her hands up in disgust and Kurenai, who had come bearing well wishes, was terribly upset.

"Don't worry." Rin assured her year mate. "Dr. Homura has a keeper."

And she was pretty certain it was true. Doctors, as a rule, did not wear jewelry. It simply got in the way. But Dr. Homura worse a beaded bracelet around her wrist, worn to shine, clumsily made as though it had been stuck together by a child. It obviously meant something to her. Maybe from a sweetheart. Rin decided it was a promise.

+++++4+++++

She stood behind her mentor as Anko did hers, spine straight and her feet evenly placed apart. They shared a brief look before staring ahead. They didn't know why they had been summoned to the Hokage's office but they could hazard a guess. Sarutobi Hiruzen was old. He had been thinking of retirement long before the Third War started.

Rin knew that Minato-sensei had been tapped as a candidate. From water-cooler gossip, she knew that so-and-so and such-and-such had also been in the running before they were killed in action. But she hadn't known Orochimaru had been considered. There was Tsunade-hime who was a direct descendent of the first Hokage, Senju Hashirama. Her sensei's sensei was the Toad Sage. Orochimaru had always seemed, slimy.

The Hokage cleared his throat.

"You have both done well. Your students have contributed greatly to the war effort. Without them, critical battles would have been lost."

"You do us much credit." Minato-sensei said sheepishly. "But I'm grateful for my team. I couldn't ask for a better one."

"Indeed." Orochimaru rolled his eyes. "One student killed, another turned traitor."

Rin bit her tongue before she could say something she might regret.

"Enough." The Hokage rebuked. "That is not why I have summoned you today."

Even the Anbu seemed to lean in to hear what the Hokage had to say.

The Hokage said finally, "I am thinking of stepping down."

Minato-sensei put up a token protest. Orochimaru did not bother which drew a faint smile from the Hokage's wizened lips.

But before he could continue, a jounin landed at the window surrounded by an entourage of Anbu and security who seemed to have been dragged through every tree between the Hokage's tower and the village wall.

"I have news!" The jounin gasped, wrestling free of Bear's hold and falling on one knee. "Inoki has sent word."

The air seemed to compress inside the Hokage's office. Ready to go off at a moment's notice.

The jounin wheezed, blue eyes wet with tears.

"The war is over."


End file.
